


In This Life

by ApprenticedMagician



Series: 2014 BBC Merlin Fest [1]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gender or Sex Swap, M/M, Reincarnation, Role Reversal, Rule 63, kind of, more of a multiverse thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 23:31:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10056956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApprenticedMagician/pseuds/ApprenticedMagician
Summary: Merlin is born a stable boy. Arthur is born the son of a minor lord.Then Merlin is born the son of an influential lord. And Arthur is born the son of an influential lord in a rival kingdom.Then they are born again.Turns out if things had been different they would have been lots of things to each other, but never good friends.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is an old prompt taken from a BBC Merlin Fest from 2014. I didn't directly participate in the Fest when it happened but I did use their prompts to get some writing done on my own time. This is one of the four pieces that resulted and this is the one I'm most proud of. 
> 
> This prompt was Favourite Quote. "I always thought if things had been different we'd have been good friends", said by Merlin to Arthur, 3x01.

**I.**

Merlin is born a stable boy. Arthur is born the son of a minor lord.

The whole household is in a flurry one spring, servants running about with anything from food to linens to freshly picked wildflowers to weave into garlands. The Lady Elena and her father are expected to arrive within the day and everyone hopes for a match between the Lady and Arthur, saying all kinds of things about how lovely a summer wedding would be and how exciting it is that Arthur’s beginning to woo someone and what a splendid match the two golden nobles will be for each other.

No one thinks it out of the ordinary to talk about marriage when Arthur has only seen seven winters or that his prospective wife Elena is practically still a babe, barely having passed her second anniversary. No one except Merlin.

Then again, Merlin knows very little about marriage. After all, he’s only five years old and his own mother has never been married. Marc is married – he’s the master of the Lord’s stable – but Merlin’s seen how unhappy he is being married to Angie. Overall, it seems quite logical to Merlin to conclude that marriage is a thing best avoided.

It becomes apparent that the young lord Arthur is of a similar opinion. Mere hours after Elena arrives, Arthur is wedging himself through the loose board in the stable’s wall and tripping into the pile of fresh dry hay. This isn’t the first time Merlin’s seen Arthur out and about at night. In fact, Merlin has caught sight of Arthur dozens of times, has watched him sneak into the kitchens from the backdoor at late hours; Merlin only saw him because at the same time Arthur became hungry, Merlin liked to sneak away himself and gaze at the stars from the loft in the stable. Merlin never called out on those nights lest Arthur tell Merlin’s mother that he snuck out of bed at night – Merlin was sure he’d get a right spanking for worrying her.

This time is different though because Merlin’s never seen Arthur come to the stables when he’s sneaking.

“What are you doing?” Merlin asks, in the way that curious boys are wont to.

Arthur’s body starts and jerks as he looks up, startled by both the boy and the question. This is when Merlin belatedly remembers that the hour is late and that he was sneaking too and has now given his hiding spot away. Merlin takes a moment to feel a little stupid (and brace his bottom for the spanking he’s sure will come tomorrow when Arthur tells on him). Arthur, however, doesn’t seem to think very much of it, his panic having retreated and apparently being replaced with a concern for the dusty state of his own knees.

“Nothing of your concern,” the little lord mutters imperiously.

Merlin doesn’t catch the dismissal in Arthur’s tone but he does catch sight of the sack over the boy’s shoulder. He blurts, “Are you running away?”

“No!” But Arthur looks up at him with the same startled expression he had when Merlin first spoke and Merlin thinks he’s lying.

“But you don’t have a horse,” Merlin states a bit dumbly, making his way down from his perch in the loft. “You can’t even ride one by yourself yet, you need Marc to guide it around the fields while you sit on top.”

“I said I’m not running away!” Arthur insists, looking like he wants to stamp a foot for good measure.

Merlin blinks, pausing now that he’s got his feet on the ground floor and is close enough for Arthur to push him over if he wants to. “But you have a bag.”

Arthur makes a funny face. Merlin thinks it’s called a ‘wince’; his mom makes the same face a lot, especially when Merlin stumbles in showing her how many cartwheels he can do.

“And _you_ ,” Arthur hisses, “are _annoying_.”

“Actually,” he corrects, “I’m Merlin!” He thinks it’s strange that Arthur would think he knows his name when he’s never talked to him before. He wonders if someone else had ever talked to Arthur about him since ‘Annoying’ is a name that lots of big adults call him. Arthur is obviously thrown to learn that he’s had Merlin’s name all wrong, because his face now twists up in a different funny way. Merlin decides to ignore Arthur’s moment of questioning everything he knows – there are things _Merlin_ wants to know and those are a great deal more important.

“Are you running away ‘cause of the baby Lady? The one you’re supposed to marry?” Arthur makes an even funnier face and squawks ( _squawks!_ ) and Merlin grins because he’s never seen a face as funny as Arthur’s. Then, a new thought occurs to him. Suddenly sure he knows why Arthur’s running, Merlin is quick to reassure him, “You know you don’t have to kiss her when you’re married.”

Arthur makes _yet another funny face_ and _tries to make the squawking into actual words_ and it’s all Merlin can do to not laugh because Arthur is exclaiming, “What the devil are you on about, _Mer_ lin? Of course I have to kiss her!”

“Nuh-uh,” Merlin says, resolute, “Marc and Angie are married and they never kiss.”

“They have three sons!”

Merlin shrugs, not at all sure what children have to do with kissing. “My mom has me but she isn’t married or kissing anybody.”

Arthur’s face becomes infinitely less funny, as if someone took a wet cloth and wiped down his face so that it became pale and sombre. Merlin cocks his head in eternal curiosity; Arthur really does have a very strange face.

“No one? Not even you?”

“She kisses me loads,” Merlin rushes to say, trying to console Arthur out of whatever has upset him. “But those aren’t true love kisses,” Merlin goes on to explain, so that his original point can stand, “those are mother kisses.”

Arthur looks to his feet which are in boots that are just a smidgen too big for him – his father isn’t the richest of lords to grace the kingdom – and he awkwardly shuffles a bit. “I didn’t know there was a difference,” he mumbled distractedly.

Merlin feels his own face dip into something sad. Everyone in the household feels the seven-year long absence of a reigning Lady, the beautiful one who was supposed to be Arthur’s mother, who died giving birth to him. In fact, that very hole in the household is part of the reason everyone’s so excited about the little lady and who she might grow up to become. Merlin hasn’t minded the thought of replacing that hole with a leading Lady, even one as little as Elena, but now he wonders if maybe Arthur had minded. It would make sense. After all, marrying Elena wouldn’t fill the absence Arthur had in his life, even if it would fill the gap for everyone else.

“Well,” Merlin says, puffing up his small chest full of determination and marching right up to Arthur’s solemn posture. “ _This_ is a mother kiss,” he pulls Arthur’s head down a little, to smack five-year old lips against seven-year old hair. Arthur gawks a little, startled for the third time that night and a little off balance now that he’s lower than the stable boy. Now that Merlin’s come closer, Arthur realizes that they are of the same height, which makes his pride a little too sore but the clumsy kiss to his head counters it with a strange fuzzy feeling.

He’s still trying to figure out what that feeling is when Merlin brings his face up again and states, “And _this_ is a true love kiss,” and that is when two boys in a stable will have their first kiss.

Arthur will pull back immediately, not in disgust but in alarm because he might be seven years old but he’s not ready to start kissing any true love of his just yet. And Merlin will finally let loose his laugh because Arthur will have such a ridiculous gobsmacked face that Merlin will think that Arthur is a little bit wonderful, or at least his face is. And he’ll invite Arthur up to the loft to gaze at the stars with him and Arthur will accept because he doesn’t really want to run away from the only home he knows.

Years later they will be nineteen and seventeen and they will be exchanging true love kisses every chance they get. They will still meet in the stable’s loft during the dark but they will be gazing at the sky in each other’s eyes and not the sky of the night.

In this life, they are lovers. They will remain so through both their marriages, though Elena and Freya, divided by class and by station, will never ever know that their husbands sneak away from their beds on the same nights.

**II.**

Merlin is born the son of an influential lord. Arthur is born the son of an influential lord in a rival kingdom.

They first meet each other in an annual tournament when Merlin is nineteen and Arthur only thirteen but they’ve heard stories of each other for years before then. Merlin has heard people talk about Arthur’s dedication and incredible handling of a sword (many sniggers are included in these talks, since it’s clear that the boy is still very much green for all the innuendo his skills can inspire) and Arthur has heard about Merlin’s astoundingly shoddy footwork. Despite the sad, sad truth to those tales, Merlin likes to participate in tournaments anyway, if only to keep his father with margin of dignity – heaven knows the shame he’d beget on the family if he were to refuse participating. Besides, someone has to place last and Merlin is only too happy to do so if it means he won’t have to exert himself sixteen times in a row against knights that only get more and more brutish.

At least, that’s Merlin’s attitude when it comes to the sword. And the joust. And the melee. He actually enjoys the mace because if he dodges quickly enough the bigger men can teeter off balance in the most hilarious fashion. (Though he utterly despises when he doesn’t dodge quick enough, _bloody hell_ ). The quarter staff isn’t so bad either, even though truly mastering the weapon requires an acute sense of balance and coordination that Merlin just cannot possess when he feels sand in his boots and sweat in his hair.

Archery however, _that_ is where Merlin is unmatched by any man in all of Albion’s kingdoms (or any woman, for that matter, to speak of the very few who had been brave enough and skilled enough to challenge him privately). It was the only sport where Merlin’s feet stay firmly planted in a single area, where his concentration doesn’t need to be divided, where his only opponent is the wind, which can be persuaded to be an ally if one knows how to. (And Merlin has spent _years_ learning how to.)

He and Arthur face off in the first round of the mace fight and the result is surprising. For all the tales of prowess and natural talent that assaulted Merlin’s ears for the past month, he expected Arthur Pendragon to be more aware of his weight and Merlin’s feet – Merlin manages to trip him three times in the first minute, and only one time was by accident. During their match, there are a thousand curses raging behind Arthur’s eyes that he won’t spit in front of a crowd during his first match of his first official tournament. Surprisingly, they aren’t directed at Merlin. Rather, they are curses of self-loathing, embarrassment, and anger and Merlin watches them twist into what must be the most nervous and humiliating snakes to ever squirm in a warrior’s stomach.

Arthur is _nervous_ and Merlin finds himself immediately endeared to him. He wonders if Arthur saw him win the archery event the day before and thought Merlin to be a more capable threat than he is. Merlin figures he must have guessed correctly because Arthur soon overcomes his nerves with a confidence that makes his armour shine (and just how that manages to work without the effect of sorcery is beyond Merlin’s knowledge).

Once Arthur finally beats him, with Merlin only softening a single blow somewhere in the middle of the match, Merlin claps his arm and shoulder and is grinning like a madman. He can’t remember the last time he had such a likable opponent.

“You did well, Arthur,” he congratulates.

But Arthur grips his hand viciously tight and accuses, “You let me win.”

Merlin’s raises a brow, more surprised at Arthur’s fury than Arthur’s keen observing eye. Still, he denies it, saying, “I certainly did not do that. Ask anyone – I never get past the first round in mace.”

“You pulled back your shot to my arm.”

“I’m hardly going to let you continue to fight with a lame arm,” Merlin explained with a snort. He wasn’t so attached to the other knights’ ideas of honour and masculinity and proving himself through agony. “You’ll need it for a long time yet if you’re reputation is at all accurate. What kind of idiot signs up for nearly every event?”

“You and I,” Arthur hisses, bringing Merlin in close even though he was a few inches shorter, “will fight mace again. Maybe not this tournament, maybe not in practice this month, but we will fight again. And you will not. Hold. Back.”

Merlin stared, grin dropped and eyes incredulous. This _child_ couldn’t be serious. His pride surely couldn’t be damaged from _winning_ a mace fight. Even for his young age, Arthur truly was strong and more than capable of winning this entire field – what right did he have to be upset with Merlin?

Before Merlin could come to his senses and snap a “Looking forward to it, you little _prat_ ”, Arthur dropped his hand and shoved himself away towards his mousy-looking squire (seriously, the mouse even let out an _eek!_ as soon as his master got near enough).

Unsure at all as to what just transpired, and the king’s congratulatory words only just making it through the linen that was stuffing his head, Merlin shuffled off the arena and into his own tent where his own squire’s words did not command his attention any more successfully than the king’s had.

 _Fine_ , he decided. If Arthur was too snobby to take a kind gesture with grace, then Merlin would never let him have a graceful outing from any match they fought. He’d trip Arthur up _twice_ as often as he had today and with three times the finesse and he would refuse to stop the match until Arthur surrendered on his back in the _dirt_. Merlin would make sure to use all his wiry might when aiming for Arthur’s right arm and he’d make sure to _smash_ it. He’d call the little prat out with taunts the whole match through and revel in the boy’s self-consciousness that would make it impossible for him to dish it back. He’d make it to the second round of the mace event and he’d do it over Arthur’s pained and bruised body.

“Ah! W-Wait! Please, Sir Merlin I haven’t-”

“Leave it Pieter,” Merlin growled, snatching up his mace and helmet, “I’ve got practice to attend.”

It will be the same tournament four years later when Arthur and Merlin will next face each other. By then Merlin will only take part in the mace and archery events because he will be busy earning more responsibilities from his father, managing the land they own and the people they protect and balancing taxes because he is well past coming of age. Arthur too, will have felt similar pressures from his father and relent the quarterstaff event but not be able to bring himself to give up any of the other thrilling events just yet. And he will have enlisted in the archery event for the first time.

Merlin will pummel Arthur in the mace fight, just as he fantasized after their first tournament, high off both the adrenaline from the three opponents he beat to the ground before he got to Arthur and the irrational fury burning inside him since the little prick _tied_ him in archery the day before.

In this life, they are rivals. It will be many, many years and a rounded table in Lancelot’s castle before they become anything else.

**III.**

Merlin is born a prince. Arthur is born a druid.

They will never meet in this life – each born kingdoms away from the other and bound tightly to the families they love. But Merlin will one day have the opportunity to kill Arthur’s sister and he will have mercy. In kind, Arthur will break the Druid tradition and interfere with some disguised mercenaries tasked with poisoning some king and prince, inadvertently allowing Merlin and his father to live to see the next day.

In this life, they are strangers. Whispered names in the night are the closest they will ever come to knowing one another.

**IV.**

Merlin is born a twin. Arthur is born an orphan.

As inseparable as Merlin and Mordred are, Mordred dies from disease at the age of five and Merlin feels his loss and grief like a boulder sat between his ribs and lungs. Neither his mother nor his father can console him and Merlin spends his days hating himself for wishing his brother had never been born.

Merlin knows he doesn’t really mean that – he doesn’t really wish Mordred had never lived. More honestly, he wishes that he didn’t feel so incomplete without him there. Merlin wishes it wouldn’t hurt so much, sleeping in a bed that is suddenly too big for three people when it had before been much too small for four. And Merlin’s family doesn’t own much, can’t afford much, so most of Mordred’s things remain around the house, prompting Merlin to see Mordred every which way he turns.

Merlin stops eating.

Not that his parents really notice but that’s not their fault. Merlin is sneaky about stuffing his food beneath his shirt and it doesn’t take very long before he decides he can give it to a street urchin later.

Actually, it turns out to be the same street urchin every time. Or, at least, Merlin thinks it is. It’s an older boy, a taller boy, with sandy hair and blue eyes that are ever watchful. But the urchin could have a twin, just like Merlin did, and they could both be coming to see Merlin on different days. Or maybe there’s more than two of them – Merlin’s heard of three-part persons being born at once.

But those thoughts just make him sad. Merlin was born a two-part person and sometimes he doesn’t know how he’s still breathing without Mordred there to breathe beside him.

They never talk, Merlin and these urchins. Merlin doesn’t want to think that they’re off happy and complete with each other while he’s been left broken apart in half. One day, the thought is so enraging that he slaps the urchin-of-the-day across the face. The boy looks surprised and he runs off pretty quickly but Merlin sees the cut on his nose where a ragged nail must have scratched.

Every day that next week, when Merlin manages to see him, the urchin boy always has that same cut on his nose and it is a revelation to Merlin to discover that his street urchin is all alone too and not part of a set.

The epiphany will make young Merlin guilty enough to apologize for the previous abuse and happy enough to invite the boy to share his family’s bed in the winter (Merlin knows extra body heat is always welcome once the snow falls, even if it means another mouth to feed; food can be rationed and scavenged, warmth cannot). After the first winter, which will extend long into the spring months, it will become hard for anyone to let the boy leave the house again.

Merlin and his parents will take to calling him Urchin. Merlin will begin eating again, no longer needing to hide his food away if he wants to share it. Urchin will not replace Mordred but he will make Merlin feel less like a broken half.

In this life, they are brothers. Urchin will never in his life say a word to his brother (or anyone), even though the name ‘Urchin’ doesn’t sit right with him and he wants to ask Merlin to change it.

**V.**

Merlin is born a lord. Arthur is born a lady.

They first meet only after Merlin has arranged and sealed the betrothal with Arthur’s (Alana’s) father and the first thing Merlin learns about his prospective bride is that she prefers to be called ‘Arthur’ by any who will indulge her in speaking her Truename. When Merlin settles into a surprised kind of silence instead of offering any of the odd remarks she usually receives, she shuffles weight between her feet and darts her gaze to the door through which the room’s entire audience had left moments prior, supremely glad that no one else bears witness to this meeting.

Finally, Merlin says, “You’ll forgive me, Lady _Arthur_ , if I do not return the courtesy of offering up my Truename to you.” He smiles at her pretty blush and adds, “A man has to keep some secrets for himself, you understand.”

“I’d expect nothing less,” she replies, a bit of frost coating her words. “Men certainly have a penchant for secret-keeping in my experience.”

Merlin is immediately intrigued. He can already tell he won’t regret this arrangement. He only hopes that Arthur will come to the same conclusion. (And, gods, does that name ever sit _delicious_ on his tongue and thoughts…)

It is an unexpected move for her to trust him with such a personal gift as her Truename so early on in their acquaintance. Most people carefully guarded their Truenames, fearing the power it allowed others to hold over them. A nonsensical fear, really, there was power in names to inspire fear but none to seize control. Simply knowing a Truename could never grant one person power over another – that privilege was fit only for relationships of master to slave, noble to commoner.

Man to wife.

Arthur was something special though, Merlin could tell that much from the five minutes he’d known her. She’d be a good wife, he thought, good but not submissive. She had set the first condition in their relationship already, demanding that he disregard her given name, and she had looked him dead in the eyes while she did so, her chin tilted high to indicate an aggressive courage. Merlin was a man who could admire courage in any shape it appeared. And speaking of shapes…

Merlin took a moment to pour his gaze over the rest of his fiancée. She had come dressed in white – as though her father were forcing him to envision her as the loveliest sort of bride – and her gown suited her body just fine, plumping up her breasts and hugging her waist tight and flowing gently off her shoulders. Arthur seemed constricted in it though, breathing seemed more of a struggle than it should be. (Merlin suddenly decided that a new gown or several would make for a good courting gift, perhaps ones made for travel that were good for _moving_ in.) Her golden hair was pinned up tightly in plaits, doing its level best not to touch or otherwise interfere with the vision of the gown. Merlin wonders what her hair looks like set loose from all those knots and pins and makes a note to keep an eye out on their wedding night – he doubts either her father or her handmaidens will let her look anything less than utterly immaculate until their vows are pledged. He wonders if it will feel like spun silk in his hands, wonders if her hair is the softest part of her or if there are other places even more perfect to touch.

He has his first misgiving about her when he realizes the generous tan of her skin. Surprised that he hadn’t taken note before, Merlin approaches her and raises a hand to cradle her face, silently marveling at the comparison between her brazen tan and his pale white. She is not at all milky pale like every other lady he knows. Merlin gives an internal sigh and supposes she must be the kind of woman who enjoys outdoor picnics and horseback riding – how else could her skin be less pale than his own? Unfortunately, Merlin has never been a fan of the outdoors, despite what little he can do to avoid it and despite how much as he likes the clean air away from his crowded city. He’s never reacted well to sunlight is the thing, but he expects Arthur will insist upon many a sun-filled adventure. He wonders if he will abhor them as much as he expects to.

“You are a remarkable sight, love,” Merlin breathes, barely aware of the affection he can already feel rooting in his heart.

“You should know, my lord,” Arthur says, the frost turning icy, “that I will not abide such an address. I would be most displeased if we should fall in love.”

Merlin wants to frown, to smirk, to chuckle, to raise an eyebrow, to kiss the thought right out of her head. Looking her up and down again, Merlin decides that yes, he wants a great deal many things. He settles for a stroke of his thumb, still in awe and admiring the woman beneath his hand. “Is the idea of my love really so unpleasant, my lady?”

“It is,” she insists, looking him dead in the eyes and refusing to stray the way Merlin’s have been. Gods, he could get lost in her eyes, a blue unlike any he’s seen before. “I’ve seen what losing love did to my uncle, what it did to the people he was meant to protect.”

Merlin spares a moment to remember last year’s news of Uther’s fall into insanity, the ruin it had laid to his land, and the madness of his sanctioned purges – all women of blonde hair and fine features had been threatened for their lives by the lord’s own soldiers. Some died, some vanished, and some were publicly dragged into the lord’s manor to be heard screaming in the night for weeks afterwards. Arthur herself might have suffered a similar fate, had her father not stepped in to protect her and usurp Uther’s place as head of Pendragon manor and lord of the eastern lands.

“I wish those horrors will never repeat themselves,” Arthur continues, “and I wish never to feel the anguish I know my uncle felt at his wife’s passing. This much is very clear to me, Merlin: _we must not fall in love._ ”

He hums in saddened understanding, removes his hand from her face and takes note of her hitched breath when he catches her hand and raises it. “Tis a poor husband who does not love his wife,” he muses, brushing a light kiss on her knuckles, “but a husband who does not make his wife happy is even poorer.”

Then, regretfully, he releases her hand and steps away, convinced he’s half in love with her already but equally determined to make this vow to her and keep it.

Their wedding will be a larger affair than either of them will like and everyone in attendance will gossip for weeks over how no declarations of lasting love were made in the vows between the young Lord Du Bois and his new wife, not even when they were unsubtly prompted to do so by the officiate. After a while though, the people will stop worrying about it – one only needs eyes to see that Lord Merlin and Lady Arthur make each other happy and surely that must be enough.

In this life, they are a married couple who do not love each other. But Arthur will latch herself to Merlin’s side each time his sun-roasted skin from another one of their summer picnics leaves him sensitive and snarly. And after each time they mate in the late night hours, Merlin will entrust the Truename ‘ _Emrys_ ’ to Arthur for safekeeping.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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